Thanks to a change in how Portugal handles its public highways, Via Verde, a Portugal-based provider of electronic toll and billing systems, faced a unique problem: A 300% increase in service demand that their existing web properties simply could not handle.

With a legislated five-month deadline to address this boom, Via Verde turned to the OutSystems® Platform, which allowed Via Verde’s IT team to quickly rebuild its faltering Java-based web portals with future change in mind.

Built to accommodate change, Via Verde’s new Customer Portal, Partners Portal and corporate website easily adapted to continuously evolving business requirements and government laws while still allowing end users to access services that previously required a trip to a brick-and-mortar store.

In only five months, Via Verde, with the help of OutSystems Platform, completely revolutionized its web presence, increasing web traffic by 400% and ensuring that the company’s online presence could handle any change, whether internal or external.

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We needed to totally redirect our customer care service while complying with governmental rules. Only the flexibility and speed of OutSystems Platform could have made it possible in such a short period of time. "

The Challenge:

With more than 2.7 million customers and an average of 500,000 transactions per day, the Via Verde system allows drivers to travel without having to stop to pay tolls, to park without needing to use self-pay machines, to automatically pay at McDonalds drive-through and to put gas in their cars without ever having to go inside to pay.

One of Via Verde's core processes is the management of all their subscribers and information requests that are received from stores and customer service centers. This is a time consuming and resource demanding activity. On top of this, new government legislation demanded SCUTS (public highways) to become toll roads. This change forced drivers to either have a Via Verde electronic billing device or to make payments at local post offices. This new legislation was estimated to increase demand by up to 300% in just 3 months.

To address this huge challenge and guarantee no drop in customer responsiveness, Via Verde needed to refocus its entire customer service approach by better leveraging their web properties. Direct human contact from a customer service representative for every incident was no longer viable.

Via Verde had only 5 months to meet the new SCUTS legislation and start accepting and processing payments from these new toll roads.

Their existing websites were not the answer. They were too slow, had low user adoption and were overall ineffective. It was not going to be something that could be changed with slight tweaks in order to meet all the new requirements.

So, Via Verde was looking for a development platform that supported rapid delivery, the creation of rich web site features and provided internal teams the ability to manage content directly. Even more important, due to the fact that the SCUTS legislation was new and its implementation in a continuous state of flux, they needed to have a tool that was flexible and allowed constant changes to meet evolving requirements.

Due to its widely recognized development agility, market reputation and excellent references especially from Brisa (another company of the group), OutSystems Platform was the natural selection to address these challenges.

The Solution:

Via Verde choose OutSystems Platform to fully rebuild its java-based web portals, taking advantage of the platform's agile and build-to-change capabilities and its complete and easy to use CMS (Content Management System).

The new portals included:

Customer Portal – development of a rich customer portal was the centerpiece of Via Verde's customer care service and the preferred entry point for any customer related issue. The main goal was to transfer to a self-service web portal the tasks previously performed with the call center or in the store.

Partners Portal – development of a portal to aggregate and share Via Verde partnerships. The partner network has a critical role in supporting Via Verde's business, especially in the demanding time period of the SCUTS transition process and the subsequent dramatic increase in device requests.

Corporate website – development of an informative website that supported the launch of a new brand image. The website project included enhanced design, structure and layout in order to achieve a modern, dynamic and appealing image while offering improved usability and navigation experience. Note, this had to be done while still allowing the Via Verde business team to easily manage the content without any external dependence.

With just one click, customers can now manage their entire Via Verde account with a series of features like:

Download toll tag device data;

Check and change personal info;

Upload additional documents when submitting special requests;

Subscribe to electronic statements;

Review and download transactions;

Download electronic statements;

Change the type and frequency of invoicing;

Cancel and re-activate toll tag devices;

Change or cancel car registration(s).

Besides assisting with the development of the portals, OutSystems played a critical role in helping Via Verde with requirements analysis and continuous adaption of the always changing business requirements (government regulations were launched and redefined several times during the course of the project sometimes even on the same day). Also, the OutSystems team played an important role in helping with the usability issues making sure that the new web business applications were easy to use.

Finally, these applications were all integrated with Via Verde core systems.

Results:

By using OutSystems Platform, Via Verde was able to start developing the new portals before a full specification was available because the platform is designed from the ground up with change in mind.

Due to the built-to-change support of OutSystems Platform, new requirements were easily accommodated with limited project risk and the final result was totally aligned with the business requirements and government laws.

The Via Verde team is able to update and change its web content, internally, through an easy to use and complete Content Management System, accelerating time-to-market.

The Customer Portal is now a fully-featured website that enables customers to do everything online that before had required a trip to the store. The customers’ relationship with Via Verde is now more efficient and the processes are clear, easy and fast.

In the Partners Portal, the workflow processes are no longer rigid, fixed and complex. Today, most sales are made through this website in a very simple process: the user fills out a form, receives a welcome letter that includes payment information via ATM and after a few days the device arrives at their home via mail. With this portal, Via Verde is also able to attract new partners.

The overall image of Via Verde’s online presence was totally renovated and modernized, making the user experience more appealing and dramatically increasing website visitors by 400%.

One of the best parts of the entire engagement was that OutSystems Platform guaranteed Via Verde total data control and centralization: a unique platform to develop and maintain all its web presence as well as to deliver new front-office applications that improve and optimize its activity.

Via Verde is now a more efficient and productive company, delivering a better service to its customers and totally ready for future challenges.

About Via Verde:

Founded in 1991, Via Verde delivers automatic billing services, which initially only included tolls. Currently, its technological system is applied to other features, always thinking in drivers comfort, such as the electronic payment of fuel, tolls and parking. Via Verde has approximately 3 million customers and processes about 500,000 transactions per day.

Increased Internal Productivity: Thanks to the OutSystems Platform’s rich features, a large number of operations can now be processed online, with no human intervention, allowing the Via Verde team to focus on more strategic activities. Maintaining the same group size the team can now respond to a much larger number of requests.

Business user autonomy: Any update to the portals can easily be made by the Via Verde business team through the OutSystems Platform’s CMS and then be rapidly available to customers, without IT intervention.

Project Card

Implemented by:

Timeline:

5 months

User Profiles:

marketing& sales team (updates to the portals), prospects customers (corporate portal), partner community (partner portal) and all customers (customer portal)